SUO: Re: Industry takeover
Remarks below.
Jay
----- Original Message -----
From: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@bestweb.net>
To: "Jean-Luc Delatre" <jld@club-internet.fr>
Cc: "Jim Schoening" <jim.s3@juno.com>; "Stand Up Ontology"
<standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org>; <apease@ks.teknowledge.com>;
<rekent@ontologos.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2003 03:39
Subject: SUO: Re: Industry takeover
>
> Jean-Luc, Adam, and Robert,
>
> The announcement that Google bought Applied
> Semantics means that a 600-pound gorilla has
> jumped into our little ontology wading pool:
>
> JLD> Too bad for you guys...
> >
> > Big money is going to tell you what a
> > "Standard Upper Ontology" is:
>
> http://www.appliedsemantics.com/ne/ne_pr_042303.html
> http://www.appliedsemantics.com/company/company_technology.html
> http://www.appliedsemantics.com/ne/ne_news_070102.html
>
> > No less monolithic, orwellian and conservative
> > than you could ever dream of! We all can rest now
> > and just buy it.
>
> Some observations:
>
> 1. The white papers on the Applied Semantics web site
> make it clear that they are not doing reasoning,
> expert systems, or anything remotely resembling
> what Cyc is doing.
>
> 2. What they call an ontology is what I called a
> "terminological ontology" in the glossary on my
> web site:
>
> http://www.jfsowa.com/ontology/gloss.htm
> <http://www.jfsowa.com/ontology/gloss.htm>
> Therminological ontologies are important starting
> points for more detailed axiomatizations. But they
> are not doing what the SUO is attempting to do.
>
> 3. Nevertheless, you can't ignore a big gorilla in
> your wading pool. Even if its intentions are benign,
> it can crush you in a playful embrace. So you must
> pay attention and make sure that you treat it with
> all due respect.
>
> This brings us to something that Adam Pease mentioned
> in an earlier note about IFF and its relevance to SUO:
>
> AP> Our charter doesn't address ontology mapping or
> > translation. IFF seems like a product that might help
> > one compose ontologies in order to create a proposed
> > standard for the SUO, but that it is not a relevant
> > proposal itself.
> >
> > In terms of John's proposal for a combined effort,
> > I could similarly see IFF being used in combining SUMO,
> > Cyc, or other ontologies, but the resulting artifact
> > would be the proposal to SUO, not the original
> > ontologies or IFF.
>
JS again> The important point is that no ontology can ever be
> a static, stand-alone artifact. The terminologies
> used by Applied Sciences are overwhelmingly larger
> than Cyc in terms of the number of concept types
> (or word senses). Somehow, the SUO will have to
> be related to such things, and the methods for
> composing or relating ontologies must be part of
> any practical methodology for using ontologies.
I quite agree with John Sowa here. This will be a metalinguistic effort
essential to SUO. The chimera of a static SUO is quite unattainable and
unrealistic. Whether or not IFF is suitable (it isn't now that I can tell,
for various reasons, including it's own terminological difficulties), or
whether other alternatives may be useful, remains to be seen.
>
> Whether or not the methodologies for using,
> relating, or composing ontologies are in the SUO
> charter or are implied by clauses that are in the
> charter is not clear. But if we don't address
> those issues, we are going to be crushed by
> the gorilla.
>
> AP> An additional concern that I have is that
> > the utility, as opposed to the mathematical
> > possibility, of employing IFF to that end is
> > also unsupported by any examples or practical
> > experience, at least so far as messages to this
> > mailing list are concerned. There are many folks
> > working on ontology mapping. What evidence is
> > there that a category theory approach allows one
> > to merge ontologies faster, or more easily than
> > other approaches, including that of emacs and
> > a human ontologist with no other tools?
>
> My brief justification: IFF is a structured
> framework for using logic to do theory revision,
> editing, merging, and comparison while ensuring
> that the results are consistent.
>
> The methods for "aligning" ontologies, which Ed Hovy
> and others have discussed, have only addressed the
> problem of relating the terminology. They have not
> gone to the deeper level of checking whether the
> associated axioms are consistent. That is the most
> critical part of the problem, and it cannot be
> solved without some serious logic-based tools.
Quite serious, and the primary difficulty lies in the obscurity of
'logic-based'.
>
> Note that I have not used the phrase "category
> theory". Robert K. cited the work on Specware by
> the Kestrel Institute, which also uses category
> theory. However, if you look at the Kestrel site,
> they don't mention category theory at all.
>
> Suggestion: Robert (or other people on the IFF
> project) must justify IFF based on its results,
> not on the theories it may use to produce those
> results. I happen to agree that category theory
> is the right framework to use, but they have to
> learn how to preach to the entire congregation,
> not just to the choir.
>
> John